Story by Stanley James, Business Editor
ZIMBABWE has unveiled a strategic agenda for skills development, driven by partnerships between industry and academia, to ensure training programmes align with labour market demands.
At the Industry-University Innovate Together Summit held in Harare this Tuesday, stakeholders emphasised the need for academia to be continuously informed about evolving job market requirements to produce graduates with relevant expertise.
Dr Moreen Mudenda, an Industrial and Organisational Psychologist from the University of Zimbabwe’s Applied Psychology Department, stressed the importance of dialogue between academia and industry.
“It is very important that industry speak with universities and narrow the skills gap by having conversations. We can learn more and understand what is actually needed on the ground and I think after this conference, we can have more interactions so that we are training students that meet industry needs,” Dr Mudenda said.
“The reason for this event is to share the extent to which there is a skills gap between the academia and industry,” industrialist, Mr Tonderai Munjoma said.
“The issue is about the extent to which to address the skills gap given the extent to which the labour trends keep on changing, otherwise if nothing is done then the situation will result in a huge talent deficit, so issues to do with productivity depends on the extent to which the stakeholders come up with strategies to adopt relevant measures that will result in us delivering graduates who have the knowledge of what industry needs.’
The government has noted the importance of partnering with the private sector in identifying employment opportunities and skills.
“The Government is really committed to such collaborative strategies as they enable decision makers to focus on what needs to be done to address the skills gap and also identifying the challenges while offering relevant solutions,” the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Skills Audit and Development, Ambassador Rudo Marble Chitiga said.
“Going forward, Zimbabwe needs a strategy that ensures that talent is identified with the academia being in constant touch with industry and commerce in choosing careers that are within the demands of the labour market at any given point of time. This augurs well in line with the latest global labour market trends.
“As we are moving towards NDS2, we are also moving towards ensuring that we adapt to new technologies that have come up, if industry and institutions of higher learning work together, then the graduate that we produce will meet development needs.”
Under the Skills Development Agenda, the government will also be working with the industry and commerce on innovations at institutions of higher learning, identifying market opportunities, and providing data on employment trends in economic sectors.
